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Presidential campaigns and third-party groups support them have spent more money on advertising in Florida than anywhere else since March.

ROMNEY

Campaign: $16,471,243

Am Crossroads $12,509,348

Crossroads GPS $12,293,037

AFP $9,014,582

Restore $7,819,601

Am Future Fund $1,359,061

Am Energy All $854,325

RNC $6,635

TOTAL FOR ROMNEY $60,327,832

OBAMA

Campaign $44,610,509

Priorities $12,713,685

SEIU $1,475,589

Planned Parenthood $447,657

MoveOn $64,359

ACLU $17,060

TOTAL FOR OBAMA $59,328,859

TOTAL IN FLORIDA $119.7 million

Source: NBC News, SMG Delta

A generation ago, a candidate named Connie Mack was elected U.S. senator in Florida after Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis withdrew his campaign from the state, hurting Democrats up and down the ballot.

This fall, Connie Mack IV can’t count on history repeating.

With presidents past, present and possibly future stumping through Florida in recent weeks, coattails are certain to play a big role in this year’s Senate contest between Mack and two-term Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.

“It’s a different era, and a different race for young Connie than for his dad,” said Republican strategist Rick Wilson, who was an aide to the elder Mack in his 1988 Senate race against Democrat Buddy MacKay.

“But he just may not get the help his father did. Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney is going to abandon Florida. Instead, Connie’s luck needs to change a bit,” Wilson said.

Mack, a four-term U.S. House member from Cape Coral, has repeatedly sought to tar Nelson and Obama as “lockstep liberals” in TV spots attacking his opponent for supporting the White House on the Affordable Care Act, stimulus package and Bush-era tax cuts.

But some polls last week showed Obama gaining, opening up narrow leads in Florida and across the nation, which suggests Mack’s linking Nelson to the president may not prove so damaging.

And while Romney’s numbers decline, Mack’s might be slumping even more. A Survey USA poll last week showed him trailing Nelson by 11 percentage points, with a Public Policy Polling survey a week earlier placing Mack 7 percentage points back.

Mack, who was given a speaking spot to address last month’s Republican National Convention, acknowledged his prospects are tethered to Romney’s in Florida.

“If Mitt Romney wins, I win. If I win, Mitt Romney wins,” Mack told reporters in Tampa. “So we are certainly going to be tied together. But see, this is something I’m proud of. I’m proud to stand next to Mitt Romney.”

The Mack campaign last week also tried to draw a contrast with Nelson, who is navigating his bond with Obama more carefully.

“We make it a regular practice to appear with Mitt Romney whenever we can,” said Mack spokesman David James. “That is unlike our opponent.”

Nelson appeared last weekend with Obama at a campaign rally in Kissimmee as the president kicked off a two-day bus trip across Florida following the Democratic National Convention. But Nelson didn’t take part in other events, citing Senate business and other campaign demands.

Nelson also didn’t join former President Bill Clinton during his two-day Florida visit last week, although the senator’s wife, Grace, attended a Clinton rally in Orlando. Romney was in Jacksonville last week, too, although Mack didn’t attend, with Congress still in session.

Nelson kept a low profile at his party’s national convention. And while Nelson TV spots have targeted Mack, they don’t play up the Democrat’s own party-line devotion.

“He’s certainly gone against President Obama when called for,” said Nelson spokesman Paul Kincaid. “For instance, he was openly critical in pushing the administration to hold BP more accountable for the oil spill. And, as another example, he fought the White House and its bean counters over NASA funding.”

Independent analyses show Nelson has voted the Democratic Party position 94 percent of the time the past two years in Congress, a level comparable to what he maintained his previous decade in the Senate.

But Mack’s strategy may not prove that potent in the fall stretch before the Nov. 6 election, critics said.

“Bill Nelson is not that personally popular with Democrats,” said Tom Jensen, who surveys Florida for Public Policy Polling. “But presidential coattails are really going to help him.”

Jensen said Mack’s tactics clearly were developed months ago, if not in 2010, when Obama was highly unpopular and a tea party wave swept many Democrats from office.

But Jensen said the voting public has evolved.

“I don’t think just trying to cast Obama as a political bogeyman is going to work this year,” Jensen said.

Mack’s campaign approach has deep roots in his family tree.

Mack’s father, also seen as a long-shot congressman when he ran for Senate 24 years ago, deployed the dogged strategy of casting his opponent, MacKay, as being too far left for Florida voters.

But Mack also was helped by Dukakis’ disastrous performance in the presidential contest.

Trailing in Florida polls by as much as 26 percent by mid-October to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Dukakis shuttered his campaign in Florida, withdrawing staff and halting spending, even as MacKay also distanced himself from the top of his party’s ticket.

Mack’s campaign catch-phrase, “Hey Buddy, you’re liberal” – repeated in TV spots and campaign appearances — became part of Florida’s political lexicon. Mack won by fewer than 35,000 votes out of more than 4 million cast.

Unlike 1988, Florida this year is the nation’s biggest presidential battleground. Neither side is expected to abandon its campaign here, no matter what happens in closing weeks.

The Obama campaign has opened 88 offices with 400 paid staff in Florida. Republican volunteers working the phones contacted 1 million voters in Florida last week, and have made 16 times more phone calls to voters this year than in 2008, officials said.

An analysis of TV ads by SMG Delta last week showed the Obama campaign has spent three times as much as Romney on Florida spots since March.

When overall TV spending by third-party groups is included, Romney has had $60.3 million spent on his behalf in Florida, and Obama, $59.3 million, the report showed.

While the presidential campaigns will help push voters toward Nelson and Mack, voters may not always stay on the expected course, experts said. But in these cases, that also won’t likely help Mack.

Jessica Taylor, who tracks Senate races for the Rothenberg Political Report, said Nelson can expect to draw some crossover support from Romney voters. Nelson, who has held elected office in Florida since 1972, still has some appeal to moderate and conservative voters, she said.